Kent Bush: Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it might be a racist duck

Wednesday

Jun 8, 2016 at 5:12 PMJun 8, 2016 at 5:12 PM

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There hasn’t been a Republican in the White House since George W. Bush packed up his fishing pole and moved back to Texas.

We will save the debate for another day about how much they apparently wanted a Republican in the White House given the interesting candidates they put up against Barack Obama.

In 2016, the GOP has become the sweet family with three young children who just purchased a pet Timber Rattlesnake and let it roam freely in their home. With Donald Trump as the presumptive nominee for the party, it seems like most Republicans are crossing their fingers and hoping no one gets killed.

The Republicans lost two straight elections to the first black President whose middle name is Hussein. That is unreal. With every overt and covert bias against him, Obama beat the GOP candidate twice.

Now, a far less than ideal candidate like Hillary Clinton is leading in national polls primarily because of the words and actions of this year’s nominee.

Trump isn’t backing down from his controversial and racially charged comments. If anything he is doubling down.

Trump recently used his bully pulpit to challenge the credibility of a judge who is presiding over a case that could be embarrassing to the Republican nominee.

I would love to hear the conversations within Trump’s inner circle, because last week, Trump sounded a lot like a teenager when he took on the judge in the Trump University fraud case.

“Everybody says it, but I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He’s a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel,” Trump said. Not only did he call the judge a “hater” twice, but he referred to himself in the third person. Both are on the verge of unforgivable before you even consider the content of his comments.

He continued. Trump always continues.

“The judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great, I think that’s fine,” he said, before interrupting himself and talking about how Mexicans are going to love him when he brings jobs. I don’t know why Mexicans would love American jobs since Trump is promising to deport more than 10 million people here illegally and build a wall to keep them out for good.

No one could ever find a way around a wall. It’s impossible. Everyone knows that.

The judge is one of those strange new Mexicans from Indiana. His parents are from Mexico but they came to America and became citizens.

Gonzalo Curiel graduated from Indiana University and he is so liberal that Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed him to the San Diego County Superior Court.Judge Curiel had to spend a year under 24-hour protection from U.S. Marshalls after a Mexican drug cartel member disagreed with one of his rulings and threatened his life.

Because of this, Schwarzenegger was one of the first Republicans to take on Trump’s racially charged comments about the judge.

“Judge Curiel is an American hero who stood up to the Mexican cartels. I was proud to appoint him when I was Governor,” Schwarzenegger said.Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who has said he supports Trump, disavowed his candidate’s comments about the judge.

“?I regret those comments he made,” Speaker Ryan said. “Claiming a person can’t do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment. I think that should be absolutely disavowed. It’s absolutely unacceptable.”

Despite being textbook racism and unacceptable, Ryan didn’t remove his support from the GOP candidate. Apparently Ryan isn’t as familiar with the textbook definition of “totally unacceptable.”

For his part, Trump has backed away from the unacceptably racist comments as much as he has any comments during the campaign.

First, Trump doubled down and said the reason the “Mexican” Judge couldn’t be fair to him was because he is planning on building a wall and keeping business out of Mexico. When Senators Lindsey Graham and Mark Kirk both withdrew support from Trump over the controversy, he decided to moderate his comments a little bit.

“Normally, legal issues in a civil case would be heard in a neutral environment. However, given my unique circumstances as nominee of the Republican Party and the core issues of my campaign that focus on illegal immigration, jobs and unfair trade, I have concerns as to my ability to receive a fair trial,” Trump said.

That sounds better than his off the cuff comments, but it is just restating the point that the judge’s heritage makes him judge Trump unfairly.

Trump said that he was only criticizing one judge, not the entire category of people. He went on to prove he isn’t racist by saying he has many Hispanic friends. I wish I had made that up to be funny, but he really said it.

The age old “I have a black friend” proof of non-racism.

Sen. Orrin Hatch tried to defend Trump by saying Trump is not a racist, “but he does make a lot of outrageous statements.”

I think the same textbook Speaker Ryan was quoting would probably say someone who made outrageous comments that were also racist might actually be a racist.

Perhaps it’s just a skunk that happens to walk like a duck and quack like a duck.

— Kent Bush is publisher of Shawnee (Oklahoma) News-Star and can be reached at kent.bush@news-star.com.

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